How to Be Alone
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Getting your Franzen fix
REVIEW BY reviewer Otherwise known as the man who dared to blow off Oprah, author Jonathan Franzen returns this month with an accomplished collection of essays that should delight his fans (assuming he still has any). The much-maligned writer, who won the National Book Award for his best-selling novel The Corrections, demonstrates his remarkable capacity for evaluating the American scene in How to Be Alone, a compilation of nonfiction pieces published during the past decade in The New Yorker, Harper's and other periodicals. Balancing the personal and the universal, the private and the public, How to Be Alone is a panoramic, inclusive collection. With "Why Bother?" Franzen, who seems to unwittingly court controversy, offers a revised edition of the infamous essay he wrote for Harper's in 1996 on the decline of the American novel. Recent winner of a National Magazine Award, "My Father's Brain" is a powerfully rendered account of his father's fight with Alzheimer's, while "The Reader in Exile" looks at the effects of technology on contemporary culture. The journalistic pieces included in the book show that Franzen ain't afraid to face facts. "Control Units," a tour of Colorado's super max prison and "Lost in the Mail," a tale of Chicago's postal service woes, are information-steeped examples of sharp journalism. Essays covering the tobacco industry and the 2001 presidential election, as well as consumerism and the nature of privacy in America, offer rare evaluations of the modern world as we know it. Sure, he stumbled in the spotlight and made some media misjudgments. The best advice where Franzen is concerned: ignore his clumsy tongue and just enjoy his writing.
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